me,” he said, “Your tramp has returned.”
Neville threw an alarmed and involuntary glance from the sign to the open door. “He has not,” said the barman, “but Norman has also had an encounter with the wretch.”
“And Archroy,” said Jim.
“What?” said Neville and Norman together.
“On his allotment last night, quizzed him over some lucky beans his evil wife took in exchange for his Morris Minor.”
“Ah,” said Norman, “I saw that same Morris Minor on Leo’s forecourt this very afternoon.”
“All roads lead to Rome,” said Jim, which Norman found most infuriating.
“About the tramp,” said Neville, “what did Archroy say about him?”
“Seemed he was interested in Omally’s allotment patch.”
“There is certainly something more than odd about this tramp,” said Norman. “I wonder if anybody else has seen him?”
Pooley stroked his chin. If there was one thing he liked, it was a really good mystery. Not of the Agatha Christie variety you understand, Jim’s love was for the cosmic mystery. Many of the more famous ones he had solved with very little difficulty. Regarding the tramp, he had already come to a conclusion. “He is a wandering Jew,” he said.
“Are you serious?” said Norman.
“Certainly,” said Pooley. “And Omally who is by his birth a Catholic will back me up on this – the Wandering Jew was said to have spat upon Our Lord at the time of the Passion and been cursed to wander the planet for ever awaiting Christ’s return, at which time he would be given a chance to apologize.”
“And you think that this Jew is currently doing his wandering through Brentford?”
“Why not? In two thousand years he must have covered most of the globe; he’s bound to turn up here sooner or later.”
“Why doesn’t he come forward to authenticate the Turin shroud then?” said Neville.
The other two turned cynical eyes on him. “Would you?”
“Do you realize then,” said Neville, who was suddenly warming to the idea, “that if he is the Wandering Jew, well we have met a man who once stared upon Jesus.”
There was a reverent silence, each man momentarily alone with his thoughts. Norman and Neville both recalled how they had felt the need to cross themselves; this seemed to reinforce their conviction that Jim Pooley might have struck the nail firmly upon the proverbial head. It was a staggering proposition. Norman was the first to find his voice. “No,” he said shortly, “those eyes never looked upon Christ, although they may certainly have looked upon…”
“God save all here,” said John Omally, striding into the Swan. Somehow the talkers at the bar had formed themselves into what appeared to be a conspiratorial huddle. “Hello,” said John, “plotting the downfall of the English is it I hope?”
“We were discussing the Wandering Jew,” said Pooley.
“Gracious,” said John “and were you now, certainly there’d be a penny or two to be made in the meeting up with that fellow.” The shifting eyes put Omally upon the alert. “He’s not been in and I’ve bloody well missed him?”
“Not exactly,” said Neville.
“Not exactly is it, well let me tell you my dear fellow that if you see him lurking hereabouts you tell him that John Vincent Omally of Moby Dick Terrace would like a word in his kosher shell-like.”
Neville pulled Omally a pint of Large and accepted the exact coinage from the Irishman; upon cashing up the sum he discovered Jim’s washer. Jim, observing this, excused himself and went to the toilet. Shrugging hopelessly the part-time barman took up his NO TRAMPS sign and crossed the bar. Before the open door he hesitated. His mind was performing rapid calculations.
If this tramp was the Wandering Jew maybe he could be persuaded to… well some business proposition, he would most certainly have seen a few rare old sights, a walking history book, why a man with a literary leaning, himself for instance, could come to some arrangement. This Jew might have personal reminiscences of, well, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Beethoven, he might have strolled around the Great Exhibition of 1851, rubbed shoulders with Queen Victoria, met Attila the Hun (not at the Great Exhibition, of course). The list was endless, there would surely be a great many pennies to be had, as Omally said. Neville fingered the painted sign. The tramp certainly carried with him an aura of great evil. Maybe if he was the Jew he would kill anyone who suspected him, he had nothing to lose. Christ’s second coming might be centuries off, what were a few corpses along the way. Maybe he didn’t want redemption anyway, maybe… But it was all too much, Neville gritted his teeth and hung the sign up at the saloon bar door. Jew or no Jew, he wanted no part whatever of the mystery tramp.
Alone in the privacy of the gents, Jim Pooley’s head harboured similar thoughts to those of Neville’s; Jim however had not had personal contact with the tramp and could feel only a good healthy yearning to make a few pennies out of what was after all
Pooley left the gents and rejoined Norman at the bar. “Where is John Omally?” he asked, eyeing the Irishman’s empty glass.
“I was telling him about the tramp,” said Norman, “and he left in a hurry to speak to Archroy.”
“Damn,” said Jim Pooley, “I mean, oh really, well I think I’ll take a stroll down that way myself and sniff the air.”
“There’s a great deal more to sniffing the air than one might realize,” said Neville, informatively.
But Jim Pooley had left the bar and naught was to be seen of his passing but foam sliding down a hastily emptied pint glass and a pub door that swung silently to and fro upon its hinge. A pub door that now lacked a NO TRAMPS sign.
“If our man the Jew is wandering hereabouts,” said Jim to himself upon spying it, “there is no point in discouraging the arrival of the goose that may just be about to lay the proverbial golden egg.”
Norman would have cried if he’d heard that one.
Archroy stood alone upon his allotment patch, pipe jammed firmly between his teeth and grey swirls of smoke escaping the bowl at regulated intervals. His thumbs were clasped into his waistcoat pockets and there was a purposeful set to his features. Archroy was lost in thought. The sun sinking behind the chemical factory painted his features with a ruddy hue, the naturally anaemic Archroy appearing for once to look in the peak of health. Sighing heavily he withdrew from his pockets the five magic beans. Turning them again and again in his hand he wondered at their appearance.
They certainly were, how had the tramp put it, beans of great singularity. Of their shape, it could be said that they were irregular. Certainly but for their hue and texture they presented few similarities. There was a tropical look to them; they seemed also if held in certain lights to show some slight signs of luminescence.
Yes they were singular beans indeed, but magic? The tramp had hinted that the term was somewhat open-ended to say the least. Beanstalk material perhaps? That was too obvious, thought Archroy, some other magic quality then? Could these beans cure leprosy, impassion virgins, bestow immortality? Could beans such as these unburden a man of a suspect spouse?
Archroy held up the largest of the beans and squinted at it in perplexity. Surely it was slightly larger, slightly better formed than it had been upon his last inspection. He knelt down and placed the beans in a row upon the top of his tobacco tin. “Well I never did,” said Archroy, “now there is a thing.”
Suddenly Archroy remembered a science fiction film he had seen on the television at the New Inn. These seed pods came down from outer space and grew into people, then while you were asleep they took
